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So I, I feel like over the past day we've
sort
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of heard a lot about design and
technology, and we have really
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good speakers, and really wonderful people
at this conference, but I wanna,
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I wanna step back just a little bit, and
talk about content.
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And, I know this is a design in technology
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conference, but I wanna talk about how
content, especially
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in the form of archives, how designers and
technologists
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can start to address the problems that I
see.
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And just to set this up, when I think of
archives, I
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think of when you come to a blog and you
wanna find
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all the old posts that people have made on
that blog, you,
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there's a couple of patterns that I think
we've all fallen into.
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There's the previous and next, and your
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constantly paging back and you're, it
takes a
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really long time to go, go through the
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entire set of arch, of archived blog
posts.
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If you look at either your Flickr
favorites or
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your chip Triple favorites, there's sort
of like a
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grid of, of images, and it's all reverse
chron,
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and it's also kind of hard to, to dig
through.
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And then there's stuff like, there's stuff
like the Twitter archive, which looks like
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Twitter, and there's, there's no real
reward
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I think for going, going through your
tweets.
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It's really you know, I think we need
things
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like data visualization to start making
sense of this information.
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And so I wanna start a little bit abstract
and
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sort of talk about why we need to be doing
this.
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And then I'll include some practical
examples, sprinkled throughout
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my talk just to ground this a little bit
more.
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Okay, so let's start.
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
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hi!,
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I'm Allen.
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And despite the title of this talk, I'm
not a trained historian.
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I'm not a trained archivist.
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Like you, I make things for the web.
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And these days I work at the New York
Times, and the first
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month I started working there, I went on a
tour of the morgue.
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This is the New York Times morgue, where
there are clippings and
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photographs of everything that the, the,
that the Times has ever published.
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And I found this.
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This was a front page of the paper on
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the morning of the sinking of the
unsinkable Titanic.
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
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And, here's the rest of, the archives.
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You know, you can see some photographs,
and on the back there's some notes.
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And there's some crossing outs, and
there's a stamp on
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the bottom that tells you when, when this
photograph was published.
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And this is what the morgue looks like.
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Right?
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This is what's in the file cabinets.
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And they're all sorted by topic, and time.
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And the man who takes care of this place,
his name is, is Jeff Roth.
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He told me that the morgue used to live in
the same building as all the reporters.
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It was very important for reporters doing
their research.
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If they were writing a piece about a
politician running
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for office, or someone famous just died,
and they're, like, crap.
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We don't need, we don't have an obituary
ready.
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We need to like, get everything we have
ever written about that
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person, and, and somehow pull it together
into an article in 2 hours.
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And the morgue would send them a file
folder of
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all the clippings and photographs that the
Times had ever written.
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And give it to them.
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And when they're done with that article,
they
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would send the clips back to the morgue.
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So this was a very important part of their
research.
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
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Now, many newspapers and magazines, they,
they kept
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similar archives but most of them had been
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dismantled and cleaned out and thrown out
because
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they take so much space and money to
maintain.
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This morgue is one of the few that still
remain open today.
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The morgue lives in a separate building
now, down
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the street from where I go to work every
day.
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
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But to be honest, I, I don't know how much
this morgue gets used today.
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
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So design for archives.
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What do we think of when we say the word
archives?
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Do we think of something like the morgue,
or do we think of
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some deep under ground vault with dusty
shelves and even
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dustier manuscripts or maybe we even think
of something like this?
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Right?
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The Egyptian pharaohs locked away in their
tombs.
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
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All these places have been forgotten.
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And they've been forgotten either because
they fell out
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of people's everyday lives, they no longer
matter to
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them, or because the people to which these
things
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did hold meaning for are dead and long
gone.
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Now the internet was designed to be
redundant and resilient.
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
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Sure we still sometimes lose data, when
geoshities when geocities shut
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down or the recent .net magazine migration
we lost all these articles.
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That happens, but those are intentional
losses, and, when
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things happen to the unsinkable, that
tends to make headlines.
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And people pay enough attention to try and
stop it.
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
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But what happens far more often to the
pass is unintentional.
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And so, it's much more difficult to guard
against.
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So, let me ask you this.
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How many of you remember the last thing
that you did on Instagram?
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How many of you, without checking your
phone, even
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remember the last photo that you posted on
Instagram?
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When you go down your feed, it lets you
teleport
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instantly, right, to California, to
Greece, to Vietnam, South Africa.
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You're seeing 5 different countries all in
a single moment in time.
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And we, we're really good at this.
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We're able to compress so much space into
a single moment in time.
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But we're not quite as good as doing the
opposite, of showing one's, one moment in
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time and seeing what, what you've done and
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what you've done in the past, and you
know.
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To go farther and farther back.
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
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And so what happens far more often to the
past is, we simply forget.
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
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It slips our mind so easily because for
us, these are just things that happen.
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Something that we did and, it doesn't hold
any meaning for us yet.
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Any weight.
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
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And so, when these things slip from not
just our
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short term memory, but our long term
memory, this information
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becomes effectively lost, even though it
stays on the servers
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of Instagram, or other web services, we
can't access it.
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We don't have access to this in our minds.
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
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And so in other words, I think the
question when
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you're designing for archives, is you're
de, designing for amnesia.
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
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How do you design a time machine?
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
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Now, how does short term memory work right
now on the web?
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Usually when you go to a users
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profile page there's a section called
Recent Activity.
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And there are all these little discreet
items of
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updates that you've all these actions that
you've been doing.
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But, I don't think anyone ever really pays
much attention to it.
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I, I know I don't, but I don't find that
very surprising
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it would be a little bit like if we were
you know,
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having a conversation and you asked me
what I did yesterday and
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I said something like, well, first at 8
o'clock, I woke up.
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And then at 8:15, I brushed my teeth and
then took a shower.
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And then at 8:30, I went and walked the
dog.
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And then at 8:45 I threw a dog, or I threw
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a stick at the do, at the dog and it ran
away.
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
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I mean, after that conversation, I would
not blame you if
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you never again ask me how my day was,
[LAUGH] right?
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That is a terrible way to have a
conversation.
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But the reason why these activity update
are so short on the web, is
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that we've gotten really really good at
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itemizing the posting and creation of
content.
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
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Less often now do you think of putting up,
up
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a whole blog post, right, you're more
often you're composing
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a single Tweet, you're taking a single
photo and posting
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that on Instagram, you're leaving a single
comment on Facebook,
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
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But, the units of creation
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
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can be separate from the units of
reflection, right?
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Right now we think of them as the same
thing but they can be separate.
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When, when we were still composing entire
blog
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posts, we, we didn't have to make this
distinction
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because if you were writing about, let's
say,
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a trip to Argentina, it was one cohesive
update.
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But if you were to do the same thing now,
there, you know, maybe you posted about
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your flight on Twitter and you took some
pictures of some sunsets on Instagram.
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And then maybe on Facebook there's this
conversation between you
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and your friends about what to eat or
where to go.
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So, if you were to come back to your trip
a year later, you have
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to forage, forage around a little bit
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before the complete picture forms in your
mind.
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
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Now, this atomization of creation is
another topic for another day.
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And, but I think it's mostly a good thing.
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It's fine.
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But, it just means that we now have to
start thinking
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very deeply about what the units of
meeting are to a person.
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See these two dinner plates?
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This one, on the left, is the typical
plate size in the
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US and the plate on the right is the
typical size in Europe.
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
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And in a study where they gave Americans,
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I'm sure it would've been the same, you
know,
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for Europeans, but if they served, if they
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served food to an American on a smaller
plate,
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those people said they were just as
satisfied with how full they were.
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Even though they ate less.
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
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Now there are a course a lot of cultural
and psychological reasons for this right.
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Most people eat whatever's on their first
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plate before they start thinking about
seconds.
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There's cultural politeness about eating
everything that you're served, but I think
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the key fact remains here that these plate
sizes, these plates
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act as handles for how you manipulate and
control how much you consume.
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And the typical activity feed is a little
bit like not having a plate.
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
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You have no sense of how much you're
supposed to eat.
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Everything is in these tiny pea sized
morsels and they all
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look the same and each one isn't very
satisfying on its own.
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So, either you're left hungry because you
just said,
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fuck it, I'm not gonna do this, or you
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eat and eat and eat too much, and you're
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bloated and you're self dis, you're,
you're disgusted with yourself.
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
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But okay, some things online do have
handles.
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Facebook timelines separate out all this
activity into years.
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Into discrete years.
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And this is great, right?
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There's only a couple of items for you to
filter and navigate by.
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And more than that, it lets you wrap your
arms around this information.
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You get a sense of the whole.
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So you have years, and you can open each
year up.
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And navigate by month, and little discrete
pieces of activity,
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like adding a new friend, they get bundled
up together.
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Because that's the unit of meaning.
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It doesn't matter that I've, that I need
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20 separate entries for adding 20 separate
friends.
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I just wanna know that in August I made 20
new friends.
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
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So this clustering of information is
something I
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think we need to do more in our archives.
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
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And this is, this is really clever.
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This is pretty advanced, but I also think
this is about as far as you can
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go without really, you know, doing this
automatically
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without really asking users to ex,
explicitly provide information.
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Now, I think that I think we have
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this bias towards collecting data from our
users.
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We, we think that anything that's
automatic is great
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because that doesn't take any effort from
our users,
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and we think anything that requires user
input is
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bad because well, what if people don't
wanna do this?
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This is too much work.
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But, Flickr, old school Flickr, was the
master of getting
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information out of users of getting
explicit information.
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They, gave, they, they made the concept of
tagging.
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Really, really prevalent across the web,
sure, but
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they also gave these other tools to their
users.
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00:13:50,120 --> 00:13:51,950
They gave sets, collections, and
galleries.
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00:13:53,370 --> 00:13:55,610
Sets are what you think of as a normal
full album, it's
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00:13:55,610 --> 00:14:01,055
just a collection of photos and
collections are one, one level up.
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00:14:01,055 --> 00:14:05,806
They group collection, other collections
then sets together
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00:14:05,806 --> 00:14:08,940
and Galleries, there are two, two rules
with Galleries.
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You could have up to 18 photos, and all of
the photos had to be from other people.
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You couldn't provide your own photos.
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00:14:17,150 --> 00:14:20,910
And the, the point of Galleries was just
that you, they wanted
249
00:14:20,910 --> 00:14:26,550
you to look at Flickr and, and bring back
some specific perspective.
250
00:14:26,550 --> 00:14:28,266
Some specific frame,
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00:14:28,266 --> 00:14:31,056
[BLANK_AUDIO]
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00:14:31,056 --> 00:14:34,500
And did, did users use these tools?
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They did.
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00:14:36,300 --> 00:14:37,615
They didn't mind the effort.
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00:14:37,615 --> 00:14:40,760
[BLANK_AUDIO]
256
00:14:40,760 --> 00:14:45,640
They created these and shared these and
commented on these and the key to
257
00:14:45,640 --> 00:14:51,550
their use was that you could share any of
these units
258
00:14:51,550 --> 00:14:56,640
privately or publicly, and this is
incredibly flexible, right.
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00:14:56,640 --> 00:15:00,050
So I could, if I went on a trip to New
York, I
260
00:15:00,050 --> 00:15:05,788
could take my com, my entire photo stream
completely private, and then maybe
261
00:15:05,788 --> 00:15:09,250
to share with my family, I would take some
photos of the hotel
262
00:15:09,250 --> 00:15:14,940
and, and some of the, I don't know,
tourist traps that I go to.
263
00:15:14,940 --> 00:15:19,700
And then maybe with my design friends, I
take some of those photos and put
264
00:15:19,700 --> 00:15:21,470
them in a new collection, but I also
265
00:15:21,470 --> 00:15:24,380
included an entire album about the high
line.
266
00:15:24,380 --> 00:15:25,685
And I can share that.
267
00:15:25,685 --> 00:15:27,834
[BLANK_AUDIO]
268
00:15:27,834 --> 00:15:30,931
It's incredibly powerful
269
00:15:30,931 --> 00:15:33,080
[BLANK_AUDIO]
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00:15:33,080 --> 00:15:39,030
And I encourage users to revisit their
collection over and over again, to derive
271
00:15:39,030 --> 00:15:44,240
new meaning from their existing body of
work by manipulating this information.
272
00:15:44,240 --> 00:15:48,105
By giving them handles to, to do something
with their data.
273
00:15:48,105 --> 00:15:52,610
[BLANK_AUDIO]
274
00:15:52,610 --> 00:15:56,050
Heres another thing, most activity feeds
275
00:15:57,250 --> 00:16:01,963
organize items by reverse chrono, reverse
chron-order.
276
00:16:01,963 --> 00:16:01,990
Right?
277
00:16:01,990 --> 00:16:04,830
Most recent and then a day ago, and then a
week ago
278
00:16:06,130 --> 00:16:09,375
and they look a little bit like this,
they're just unconnected dots.
279
00:16:09,375 --> 00:16:11,900
[BLANK_AUDIO]
280
00:16:11,900 --> 00:16:17,190
But, I think what's missing here is, is
cause and effect.
281
00:16:18,530 --> 00:16:22,480
Right, the way we talk about the past you
know lets
282
00:16:22,480 --> 00:16:26,420
say, there was a github issue, that
someone filed a bug.
283
00:16:26,420 --> 00:16:31,530
And the way we talk about this is, we're
like, oh, so-and-so found this bug and
284
00:16:31,530 --> 00:16:33,670
then someone else wrote in to confirm that
285
00:16:33,670 --> 00:16:35,610
they could produce this bug on their
machine.
286
00:16:35,610 --> 00:16:40,370
And then another person chimed in and,
related it
287
00:16:40,370 --> 00:16:43,850
to this other ticket that had already been
filed.
288
00:16:43,850 --> 00:16:46,079
And then finally, someone submitted a
patch that fixed it.
289
00:16:47,650 --> 00:16:48,440
Right.
290
00:16:48,440 --> 00:16:49,635
So it's a little bit more like this.
291
00:16:49,635 --> 00:16:52,030
[BLANK_AUDIO]
292
00:16:52,030 --> 00:16:53,255
There's cause and effect and
293
00:16:53,255 --> 00:16:55,540
[BLANK_AUDIO]
294
00:16:55,540 --> 00:17:01,410
we create these atoms online, and we put
them online and they get shared, and they
295
00:17:01,410 --> 00:17:06,979
get favorited, and reblogged, retweeted,
and they take on their own life.
296
00:17:08,960 --> 00:17:10,960
They go on their own journeys.
297
00:17:10,960 --> 00:17:11,880
They have their own history.
298
00:17:11,880 --> 00:17:13,750
This is version one Mixel.
299
00:17:13,750 --> 00:17:18,500
And, what I loved about, what you could do
with the collages was that you could take,
300
00:17:18,500 --> 00:17:24,770
you could create a snippet of a fragment
of an image and use that in your collage.
301
00:17:24,770 --> 00:17:28,180
But, someone else could also take that
image,
302
00:17:28,180 --> 00:17:29,960
and use it, reuse it in their collage.
303
00:17:31,250 --> 00:17:33,830
And you could actually follow the life of
that particular image
304
00:17:33,830 --> 00:17:37,460
fragment, and see how it was used across
all of Mixel.
305
00:17:39,100 --> 00:17:39,700
I think that's great.
306
00:17:41,980 --> 00:17:42,190
Right.
307
00:17:42,190 --> 00:17:47,690
And we, we should really preserve and
present the journeys of our atoms.
308
00:17:47,690 --> 00:17:48,692
In our systems as well.
309
00:17:48,692 --> 00:17:53,680
Just, as another example, on Rdio, if
someone
310
00:17:53,680 --> 00:17:58,590
shares a song with me and then I, if I
listen to it and I add it to my
311
00:17:58,590 --> 00:18:04,250
collection, sure these are all separate
events to a computer, right?
312
00:18:04,250 --> 00:18:07,810
Maybe that person sent that song to me 2
313
00:18:07,810 --> 00:18:10,740
months ago and I never got around to, to
listening
314
00:18:10,740 --> 00:18:13,750
to it until now, and so they might appear
315
00:18:13,750 --> 00:18:18,440
far, far apart on my activity feed, but
they're related.
316
00:18:18,440 --> 00:18:23,070
They're obviously related and when I look
back on my activity, I
317
00:18:23,070 --> 00:18:25,230
would wanna see that information
presented,
318
00:18:25,230 --> 00:18:27,475
this relationship presented to me as well.
319
00:18:27,475 --> 00:18:31,270
[BLANK_AUDIO]
320
00:18:31,270 --> 00:18:34,960
So, like I said I, I think we can imagine
and
321
00:18:34,960 --> 00:18:36,580
automatically capture a lot of these
322
00:18:36,580 --> 00:18:40,008
sequences, but they're simply starting
points.
323
00:18:40,008 --> 00:18:44,190
And I think if we give users tools to tell
324
00:18:44,190 --> 00:18:48,940
more complicated stories than we can
imagine, they'll do it.
325
00:18:48,940 --> 00:18:50,200
These are story telling tools.
326
00:18:51,600 --> 00:18:56,910
Another example that I think a lot of you
will be familiar with is do
327
00:18:56,910 --> 00:19:02,386
your list apart redesign that happened
recently which is gorgeous.
328
00:19:02,386 --> 00:19:06,530
I'm a typographer at first, so the first
thing that appeared in my Twitter
329
00:19:06,530 --> 00:19:10,075
timeline when people were talking about it
was how gorgeous the large type was.
330
00:19:10,075 --> 00:19:13,100
[BLANK_AUDIO]
331
00:19:13,100 --> 00:19:16,850
But the second thing I latched onto was
their archive page, and I don't
332
00:19:16,850 --> 00:19:20,900
have a screen shot of it here, but I'll
just very quickly describe it.
333
00:19:20,900 --> 00:19:26,630
All the articles are sorted by author,
that's a piece of automatic data that
334
00:19:26,630 --> 00:19:32,650
you get for free Just from their very
smart tagging in CMS system and they also
335
00:19:32,650 --> 00:19:34,740
you know sorted the articles by topic,
336
00:19:34,740 --> 00:19:39,948
you know design, you know development,
content strategy,
337
00:19:39,948 --> 00:19:46,010
but it's still really hard if you were a
new designer or a new developer and
338
00:19:46,010 --> 00:19:48,210
you were digging through the history of
the
339
00:19:48,210 --> 00:19:52,145
web as represented in the OS apart
archive, right?
340
00:19:52,145 --> 00:19:54,350
[BLANK_AUDIO]
341
00:19:54,350 --> 00:19:59,630
The design topic could be broken out
really into the initial
342
00:19:59,630 --> 00:20:05,140
move away from tables and starting to
think about web standards and HTML
343
00:20:05,140 --> 00:20:10,500
and CSS and then, you know, then the the
Dao article
344
00:20:10,500 --> 00:20:15,180
that was really influential came into
being, and that's like a separate period.
345
00:20:16,300 --> 00:20:18,190
And after that, there was a huge phase
346
00:20:18,190 --> 00:20:21,760
of adaptive web design and responsive web
design.
347
00:20:21,760 --> 00:20:24,956
And so if I went to the design topic page,
348
00:20:24,956 --> 00:20:28,960
I would wanna see this sort of history
broken out.
349
00:20:28,960 --> 00:20:32,760
I don't wanna just see 1000 articles were
tagged as design.
350
00:20:34,330 --> 00:20:37,370
This is what I think we should be thinking
351
00:20:37,370 --> 00:20:39,795
about in terms of the shape of our
content.
352
00:20:39,795 --> 00:20:43,500
[BLANK_AUDIO]
353
00:20:43,500 --> 00:20:47,560
Now of course we already have places to
tell these stories.
354
00:20:47,560 --> 00:20:51,710
Right, we have Twitter, we have Instagram,
we
355
00:20:51,710 --> 00:20:55,780
have Facebook, and so I think one
question,
356
00:20:55,780 --> 00:20:57,670
one way to answer the question of how
357
00:20:57,670 --> 00:21:00,130
can we make these archives more relevant
to people.
358
00:21:00,130 --> 00:21:01,339
How do we reach more people?
359
00:21:02,710 --> 00:21:06,060
Is to already be, is to be increasingly
visible on the
360
00:21:06,060 --> 00:21:08,925
platforms people are already on and to
tell your stories there.
361
00:21:08,925 --> 00:21:11,790
[BLANK_AUDIO]
362
00:21:11,790 --> 00:21:16,745
I'm, I'm gonna shift gears a little bit
and talk about three different projects.
363
00:21:16,745 --> 00:21:19,860
[BLANK_AUDIO]
364
00:21:19,860 --> 00:21:25,700
The first project is an art project by
James Bridle who lives in the UK.
365
00:21:25,700 --> 00:21:28,120
And he made this thing called
Dronestragram.
366
00:21:30,570 --> 00:21:34,990
Dronestragram reports every single drone
strike made by the US military.
367
00:21:36,380 --> 00:21:39,430
He takes the satellite view of the
location of that drone
368
00:21:39,430 --> 00:21:44,290
strike, puts a photo filter on it,
because, why not, it's Instagram.
369
00:21:44,290 --> 00:21:50,800
And then in the description of each photo,
in the caption of
370
00:21:50,800 --> 00:21:54,150
each photo, he posts a description of what
happened in that strike.
371
00:21:55,900 --> 00:21:59,460
And what's great about this, is that we
372
00:21:59,460 --> 00:22:03,400
haven't quite understood how drone strikes
work really.
373
00:22:03,400 --> 00:22:04,572
We don't really understand it.
374
00:22:04,572 --> 00:22:08,930
Maybe you read one article or two and you
have a
375
00:22:08,930 --> 00:22:14,550
sense of like okay, in a year there's 200
strikes and OK.
376
00:22:16,340 --> 00:22:20,050
But, I check Instagram a couple times a
day and every week
377
00:22:20,050 --> 00:22:23,900
or so between photos of my friends, I see
something like this.
378
00:22:25,670 --> 00:22:30,562
And through this I get a real sense of the
pace of these drone strikes.
379
00:22:30,562 --> 00:22:32,160
[BLANK_AUDIO]
380
00:22:32,160 --> 00:22:35,140
I really start to understand time in this
way that I would
381
00:22:35,140 --> 00:22:39,459
not be, be able to through, a piece in the
New York Times.
382
00:22:41,220 --> 00:22:42,108
Here's another example.
383
00:22:42,108 --> 00:22:49,530
This is the real time Titanic account that
was created by The History Press
384
00:22:51,020 --> 00:22:55,880
to commemorate the 101st anniversary of
the sinking of the Titanic
385
00:22:55,880 --> 00:23:01,130
and it tweeted hypothetical bits and
pieces of text and photos
386
00:23:02,540 --> 00:23:07,740
based on research material for an entire
month leading up to the sinking and for
387
00:23:07,740 --> 00:23:09,330
most of the time it was kinda funny.
388
00:23:09,330 --> 00:23:13,310
It was a lot of very like tweets because
no one
389
00:23:13,310 --> 00:23:16,070
on the ship really knew what was gonna
happen, but we do.
390
00:23:16,070 --> 00:23:20,100
And that's interesting there's, there's
this tension here, right.
391
00:23:20,100 --> 00:23:21,254
We know how this story ends.
392
00:23:21,254 --> 00:23:23,100
[BLANK_AUDIO]
393
00:23:23,100 --> 00:23:29,442
And I would be checking Twitter throughout
the day
394
00:23:29,442 --> 00:23:35,633
and seeing tweets from my friends and
seeing this
395
00:23:35,633 --> 00:23:41,824
[SOUND] and it sort of, I'm sort of
halfway in this
396
00:23:41,824 --> 00:23:47,864
world in the early 1900's and halfway in,
397
00:23:47,864 --> 00:23:52,890
you know, in today, today's time.
398
00:23:54,260 --> 00:23:57,500
And every, and life goes on in my time.
399
00:23:57,500 --> 00:24:00,845
Even though the world is falling apart
here.
400
00:24:00,845 --> 00:24:03,980
[BLANK_AUDIO]
401
00:24:03,980 --> 00:24:06,300
So I think, I think these two projects
402
00:24:06,300 --> 00:24:12,010
exist as polar opposites of this, of a
continuum.
403
00:24:12,010 --> 00:24:14,630
The Titanic account had a very obvious
narrative.
404
00:24:14,630 --> 00:24:16,690
They, they knew where they were gonna
start.
405
00:24:16,690 --> 00:24:21,230
They knew where they were gonna end, and
Joseph Graham is kind of just
406
00:24:21,230 --> 00:24:26,000
you know there's no narrative there, it's
just a way of trying to understand drones.
407
00:24:26,000 --> 00:24:28,560
And this third project sort of sits some,
somewhere in the middle.
408
00:24:30,580 --> 00:24:34,900
This is a Twitter account called the
Library of Aleph.
409
00:24:34,900 --> 00:24:37,480
And it's this guy who goes through the
410
00:24:37,480 --> 00:24:42,540
Library of Congress photo archives and he
looks
411
00:24:42,540 --> 00:24:44,560
at the photos and when he sees an
412
00:24:44,560 --> 00:24:48,915
interesting caption, he posts the caption
on Twitter.
413
00:24:48,915 --> 00:24:51,420
[BLANK_AUDIO]
414
00:24:51,420 --> 00:24:52,510
He doesn't link to the photo.
415
00:24:52,510 --> 00:24:53,890
It's just, it's just the caption.
416
00:24:55,010 --> 00:24:58,545
And so this sort of started out like
Instagram or Junkstagram.
417
00:24:58,545 --> 00:24:59,910
There was no real narrative.
418
00:24:59,910 --> 00:25:04,895
But it found a narrative in July of this
year.
419
00:25:04,895 --> 00:25:08,255
[BLANK_AUDIO]
420
00:25:10,370 --> 00:25:16,640
He was in the archives when the ruling of
George Zimmerman came out.
421
00:25:18,860 --> 00:25:21,060
And for those of you who don't, for those
of you
422
00:25:21,060 --> 00:25:25,960
who don't know, George Zimmerman was tried
for killing a black man
423
00:25:28,000 --> 00:25:29,230
and he was ruled innocent.
424
00:25:31,250 --> 00:25:36,010
And so, this accounts are re-tweeting a
couple of other things from history.
425
00:25:36,010 --> 00:25:37,700
And I wanted to read a couple of them
here.
426
00:25:40,250 --> 00:25:45,290
Martin Luther King Jr pulls up the cross
that was burned on the
427
00:25:45,290 --> 00:25:49,700
lawn of his, of his home, as his son
stands next to him.
428
00:25:49,700 --> 00:25:50,470
Atlanta, Georgia.
429
00:25:52,070 --> 00:25:59,263
Execution of 38 Sioux Indians at Mankato,
Minnesota, December 26th, 1862.
430
00:26:01,250 --> 00:26:04,750
Japanese merchant posts sales sign in
preparation
431
00:26:04,750 --> 00:26:07,150
for evacuation as small son looks on.
432
00:26:08,750 --> 00:26:13,853
Lynching of Leo Frank, Marietta, Georgia.
433
00:26:13,853 --> 00:26:18,060
Lynching, Sikeston.
434
00:26:18,060 --> 00:26:21,816
Contrabands coming into camp in
consequence of the proclamation.
435
00:26:21,816 --> 00:26:27,070
A group of contrabands.
436
00:26:27,070 --> 00:26:29,160
The ghetto, Chicago, Illinois.
437
00:26:30,230 --> 00:26:32,470
The ghetto, New York, New York.
438
00:26:35,060 --> 00:26:37,250
The public swimming pool has been changed
into
439
00:26:37,250 --> 00:26:39,878
a private pool, in order to remain
segregated.
440
00:26:42,160 --> 00:26:44,260
African American woman being carried to
police
441
00:26:44,260 --> 00:26:47,718
patrol wagon during demonstration in
Brooklyn, New York.
442
00:26:47,718 --> 00:26:53,614
[BLANK_AUDIO]
443
00:26:53,614 --> 00:26:59,160
It sort of spontaneously found a story.
444
00:26:59,160 --> 00:27:01,640
I don't think the person who created this
account had
445
00:27:01,640 --> 00:27:06,730
any objective when he started, but that
night, in the middle
446
00:27:06,730 --> 00:27:09,830
of all the anger and all the frustration
that was coming
447
00:27:09,830 --> 00:27:14,230
out in waves, and waves online, this,
there was this account.
448
00:27:14,230 --> 00:27:16,130
And it, it kept going.
449
00:27:17,350 --> 00:27:22,809
It went through the night and it went on
to the next day, every 20,
450
00:27:22,809 --> 00:27:29,150
30 minutes relentless and not only did it
451
00:27:29,150 --> 00:27:32,290
hold meaning for people, it created new
meaning.
452
00:27:33,500 --> 00:27:38,070
It was an act of renewal this dusty stuff
from the turn of the last century,
453
00:27:39,890 --> 00:27:45,090
met people's anger and it told them, this
is not new, this has happened before.
454
00:27:45,090 --> 00:27:48,555
And it told them, you are not alone in
this.
455
00:27:48,555 --> 00:27:54,670
[BLANK_AUDIO]
456
00:27:54,670 --> 00:27:56,999
These are, these are all tiny time
machines.
457
00:27:58,570 --> 00:27:59,390
You're in the present.
458
00:27:59,390 --> 00:28:03,660
You are always in the present because you
were born in this decade, in this century.
459
00:28:04,940 --> 00:28:09,400
But these tiny time machines open a little
portal back
460
00:28:09,400 --> 00:28:12,280
to a specific time, just big enough to fit
you.
461
00:28:13,840 --> 00:28:14,910
It is the ladder to the past.
462
00:28:17,010 --> 00:28:19,040
It feels more real because it is imbedded
in
463
00:28:19,040 --> 00:28:22,040
the networks you use, everyday, as part of
your life.
464
00:28:24,130 --> 00:28:26,960
And you see these stories being told, or
465
00:28:26,960 --> 00:28:29,040
you construct your own stories, from what
you're seeing.
466
00:28:29,040 --> 00:28:31,560
Stories from a long time ago, being told
in you.
467
00:28:34,140 --> 00:28:36,259
We don't need to design dusty shelves.
468
00:28:37,500 --> 00:28:39,660
This is why they matter, why the past
469
00:28:39,660 --> 00:28:43,830
matters, because they coexist with us in
the present.
470
00:28:45,280 --> 00:28:48,270
They're not things we put in a tidy box
and forget.
471
00:28:49,530 --> 00:28:51,690
They're part of the stories we tell each
other today.
472
00:28:51,690 --> 00:28:54,970
They are lenses that are personal and
often political.
473
00:28:54,970 --> 00:28:58,840
And they help us understand what's going
on.
474
00:28:58,840 --> 00:29:02,605
This stuff online, things that we spent
475
00:29:02,605 --> 00:29:06,180
hours and days and months working and
building
476
00:29:06,180 --> 00:29:09,150
and that people have spent so many
477
00:29:09,150 --> 00:29:13,085
hours putting their effort, time and
effort into.
478
00:29:13,085 --> 00:29:14,790
[BLANK_AUDIO]
479
00:29:14,790 --> 00:29:21,450
Isn't it a shame that you just forget
about this, this stuff is our heritage
480
00:29:23,690 --> 00:29:25,248
and we should be taking better care of it.
481
00:29:25,248 --> 00:29:29,136
Thank you.
482
00:29:29,136 --> 00:29:33,492
[SOUND]